


Just Say The Magic Word

by chromyrose



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alpha Timeline, Dysfunctional Family, Family, Gen, Growing Up, Loneliness, Mother-Daughter Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-30
Updated: 2012-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-15 09:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/525784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chromyrose/pseuds/chromyrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Hello, Roxy,” she repeats. You are ready this time and don’t scream, but you hold Mutini tighter. “My name is Rose. I am your mother.”</p><p>or, parenting in the 25th century</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Say The Magic Word

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Soldier on, soldier on](https://archiveofourown.org/works/486765) by [towardsmorning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/towardsmorning/pseuds/towardsmorning). 



They have always been there, but you only become aware of them after you turn seven.

You like playing in the other bedroom more than you like playing in yours. The bed there is bigger, and when you jump on it, you can almost touch the ceiling. It makes you feel like a bird, and you like to jump and flap your arms and pretend to fly around. You know you’re not a bird, but you aren’t really sure what you are, and pretending is fun. 

You fall off the bed when you are seven and it hurts, so you sit down on the big empty floor and start crying. And that’s when you see it that there is something under the big bed, and your crying stops.

The something is a box, which you crawl under the mattress to tug out; you’re really happy when you can recognize your name on it, and then struggle through the words that come after it. ‘Do not open until you are six (6)’. You’re not too sure what that means, except maybe that’s what you are, a six. You bite your lip, and wonder if you should ask one of the carapaces, except the box has your name on it and not theirs. 

Dust comes off the top when you pull the sides open. Maybe this is a magical box, and you can jump inside and there will be someone like you there to play with. You peer in eagerly, but the box isn’t a portal that goes anywhere.

Toys are on the top, a little girl doll that has yellow hair like you, and a few puzzles with pictures of kitties. Clothes are layered beneath them, shirts and tight polka-dot pants, and even a princess dress like in your fairytale books. You pull the shirt off your back and shimmy into the dress, and it takes a long time and tugs on your hair as it goes on, but you look in the tall mirror and grin at your princess self anyways.

After the clothes are some books with little words, the kind you know. (A lot of them have ‘birthday’ in the title, and after you read some you figure out what six is.) And then, at the bottom of the box, there are CDs like the ones that were next to your laptop for games.

In your haste to get to your computer you almost trip on the floor. 

The disc makes a whirring sound and then starts, and you don’t even need to press play. The video is from inside the other bedroom, except there is someone you do not know sitting on the big chair near the desk. She has yellow hair like yours, too, and purple eyes and purple lips, and she licks them but the color doesn’t come off.

“Hello, Roxy,” she starts, and you scream because this someone was in your house and knows your name and the way she says it is so pretty and she sounds nothing like a carapace and you didn’t even know you could say your name that way. You fall out of your seat and run back to your bed for Mutini, your cat plush. The video is still running and the lady is so pretty and so you go back, and restart it. 

“Hello, Roxy,” she repeats. You are ready this time and don’t scream, but you hold Mutini tighter. “My name is Rose. I am your mother.”

She pauses and you do, too. The kids in your shows and games have mothers; bigger ladies who make them food and hold them at night and now you have a mother too. Just like them. You can’t look away from the screen now, but you’re hugging Mutini harder than ever, even harder than the time the sky was making loud noises.

“You’re six years old now,” she says softly. “You’re becoming a big girl. Did you already lose some of your baby teeth?”

You nod frantically at the screen because yes, you remember how scary it was when your tooth just fell out in a bite of pumpkin one day. 

She laughs a little and your eyes are burning. You don’t know much about mothers but they’re supposed to hold you and she hasn’t but she’s right there on your laptop and she’s laughing and looking right at you. 

“I love you, Roxy. I love you more than I have ever loved anything.”

You love her too, love her so much because she’s saying your name and she looks like you and she got you this pretty princess dress.

“But I’m sorry, baby. Mommy can’t be with you. I wish I could, Roxy, I would give anything to be with you. But you’re going to have to be strong for mommy--”

You start crying again and miss the rest of the video.

\--

“There’s a notifier on your computer that will tell you how old you are, Roxy.”

You find it right where she tells you it is, and it says you’re seven, not six. But you’re not done with the first box yet, because there is another disk you need to see. 

It’s her again, and even though you still feel a little betrayed that she’s not coming, you’re happy for more of her nonetheless. She holds up a little book, and it’s one of the ones that was in the box.

“I’m going to read this to you,” she says in her pretty, pretty voice. “You can read along with me, if you’d like.”

You run along and get the books, all of them, but Winnie the Pooh sits open in your lap and you’re not looking at the words, you’re looking at her mouth as she makes them. She talks nice and calm and slow, and Winnie the Pooh leads into The Very Hungry Catepillar and Goodnight Moon. You fall asleep during If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, and start crying when you wake up and the video is over.

\--

You go back for box seven the next day, after you fell asleep to her soothing voice again. There are more books, bigger ones that might be too hard for you, unless she helps, and toys and some movies. You have more clothes, and a pair of light-up sneakers. There is another princess dress, and this time there is a matching one for Mutini. You put all of that aside, and find a new disc at the bottom of the box.

“Happy Birthday, Roxy,” it opens, and she’s wearing a pretty skirt now. “I love you, so much.”

She tells you about her, that she writes books about magic and wizards, and tells you that she knows a little magic herself. She teaches you a spell to say whenever you feel sad, and promises it will make you feel better again. She tells you to believe in it, because magic doesn’t work unless you believe it, like fairies in Peter Pan. 

“Don’t be scared, Roxy,” her voice croons. “You are safe where you are. You’ll always have my protection, even if you don’t have me.”

You want to be selfish and throw a tantrum and scream at her that you would rather have her and not be safe but you know she can’t hear you. 

“I love you,” she says once more, blows you a kiss. You let the video end and start crying.

\--

You want to open box eight. You’re not supposed to, but you know where it is, and the little calendar in your computer (calendar, a new word she taught you), says it’s not for lots of days until it’s your birthday again. 

But you’re not supposed to. You worry your bottom lip and try not to think about the boxes under the big bed, under Mommy’s bed. You play with your toys, run around in the light up sneakers and show them off to the carapaces, even. 

You put the videos on every night, and sleep to the sound of your mother’s even voice coming from your laptop speakers. Sometimes you put headphones in, too, to press the sound in your ears so that none of it can escape to the outside world. Listening to her read through the tough words makes them easier to read when you go over those books alone, and you are reading a lot better than you used to. 

Sometimes you read to your cats and pretend she’s there listening to you easily take down the big words, too.

\--

Box Eight greets you with more clothing, bigger books (these have chapters, for the first time), less toys but more movies, and even a blank book with a pink glitter pen. 

The video cases are in the bottom as always; you fish them out eagerly.

“Happy Birthday, Roxy,” she smiles at you, little wrinkles in the corners of her eyes. Her makeup is so perfectly put on, not at all like when you play with the tubes she left behind.

“You’re becoming such a big girl. I’m very proud of you.”

She talks to you about her house, the place where she lives (New York, near a waterfall that isn’t there anymore). She tells you about all the people she sees when she travels around the country, talking about her books. You’re immensely jealous of them, and you give one of the cats an angry scratch behind the ear, because she’s the only one around right now. 

Then she clears her throat and picks up a book, ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’, and reads to you about wizards and witches and magic. 

She reads the entire book, and it takes more than two videos to do it in, but when she closes it you are completely in love with the story. With a twinkle in her eye, like she knows, she tells you the others are in the bookshelf in her room.

You spend the next year reading through the series, and though you laugh and cry and scream and clutch to the pages, you miss her voice crooning the words to you like a lullaby.

\--

The minute midnight hits on your ninth birthday, you tear into the box with reckless abandon. 

It’s entirely empty, save for the CD case of her video, and a book, ‘Complacency of the Learned’, by Rose Lalonde.

“Happy Birthday, Roxy,” she smiles at you. 

Her soft words instruct you to open to the front of the book, and there’s a page near the front with only a single line of text: ‘For my daughter.’

Tears leak from your eyes and blot on the page and you hug the book to your chest and you hold it really tight to your body because this is _her book_ , and she wrote it for _you_.

She picks up a copy (the same copy, she tells you; she’s touched this book and flipped through all it’s pages and now it’s all yours, it’s always been yours), clears her throat, and begins,

“It all began, as it would end, with a game of chess…”

\--

By your tenth birthday, ‘Complacency of the Learned’ is tearing in the binding from the affection you’ve shown the book. 

A big photo album sits in the box, with the disc, and a gun. You know what guns are from the movies you’ve seen, and you know they’re scary. Something like fear hardens into a lump in your stomach, and you make sure not to touch it as you fish the album out.

There is a picture of your mother in the front page; she’s sitting at a table, a stack of books on either side of her, and her smile seems wry, teasing, but beautiful. You touch your fingertip to her lips, her face, and then you turn the page. 

You see the pictures and then wish you hadn’t.

In the video, her eyes are puffy and red; it’s a look you know all too well. 

 

She tells you everything and you wish you could rewind the day so that the box stays closed. Her voice is pinched and she takes awkward pauses as her mouth makes the words, “Her Imperious Condescension… Rebellion… Hiding… Not Safe… Batterwitch… Enemy…”

In one of the photos she’s sitting beside a blond man, a recurring figure she called ‘Dave’, and the newspaper they’re sharing is dated April 13, 2009.

You throw the album at your laptop, which is _still talking to you_ , why is the story taking so long why does it hurt so much, why, why, why…

You throw the album at your laptop, and scream. You scream, and scream, and Rose is still talking at you, not to you, never to you, because she can’t ever talk _to_ you, she lived 400 years in the past and she’s dead now and you’re the only one left and you’re always, always going to be all alone.

You scream until your throat is raw and even then you whimper loudly. But it’s not enough to cover her voice anymore.

“…so, so sorry things had to be this way, Roxy. I did everything in my power, would have done anything more, just to have you and hold you in my arms the way it was supposed to be,” she’s crying oh fuck, oh fuck, your mother is _crying_ and that is not okay. You’re angry with her but it’s still _not okay_. 

It takes a while after the video ends for you to find the will to move. When you do, though, you stick your hand back into the box and pull out the gun. Your finger finds the trigger, slides into the guard like you were born to put it there. 

You are ten years old, and you think it’s about time you stopped crying.

\--

You open box eleven with determination, when that day comes. You’re a sharp shooter, now; you practiced on pumpkins, first still, but then you built a slingshot and made the carapaces launch them. You learned that if you bite the inside of your cheeks, you won’t cry as readily. You look in the mirror, naked, and the little buds on your chest are growing, they’re big enough to jut out when you turn sideways, and there’s hair between your legs and under your arms. 

So you’re ready. Whatever it is Mom has in store for you this year (deathwarbloodrebellion -- alone), you can handle it.

The box has only three things; the CD, a webcam, and a slip of paper. The paper tells you to follow it’s directions, first. The CD, apparently, can wait.

You follow her handwritten instructions, hook yourself up, and within minutes there are two boxes on screen. One of them is showing you yourself, and the other is black.

You hit invite with a trembling finger. Something flashes onto the screen seconds later, yellow, and you duck your head because you’re not ready, even though you thought you might be. 

Then you look back up. It’s another person who looks like you, and maybe even a little like your Mother in some ways that you don’t. He has big spiky hair and bigger black glasses, but he slides them off his nose and his eyes are bright orange and it strikes a chord deep in you.

“H-hello…?” You stutter when your voice returns. 

“Hello?” A shaky voice, not like your own and not like your mother’s, either, one like nothing you heard before, replied. The novelty of it didn’t matter, as far as you were concerned, because you were already in love.

 _I think it’s time you made a friend,_ the note had said. _His name is Dirk._

\--

You spoke with Dirk through video chat until you fell asleep at your keyboard, and he at his; when you awoke, his spiky hair was all you could see of him. You type, “i’ll be right back,” and close out of the window, ignoring the irrational fear that you won’t be able to get to him again.

You put the CD into your laptop. She looks a little more wry in this one than usual, and after the customary birthday greeting she gets straight to the root of the matter.

“You’re eleven now, Roxy, and you may have noticed by now that your body is going through some changes. I only hope that I am not getting this video to you too late, but I also did not want you to worry about this before it was necessary.”

She tells you about breasts, and hips, and explains the hairs you marvel at in your reflection. She tells you about the menses, shows you how to use a sanitary napkin, teaches you about tampons. She tells you about sex, the birds and the bees, boys and girls, especially girls. With a little color in her cheeks she tells you about masturbation, that it’s normal, that it’s okay. 

Then she purses her lips, and tells you about crushes, and love, and how she hopes you’ll meet someone, maybe Dirk or maybe someone else, that you can be yourself around and be happy with. 

When the video ends, you look up masturbation on the internet, try it out on your growing body, and it feels so good you cry anyways. Then you wipe your face and wash your body, and talk to Dirk. You want to ask if he knows about this stuff, but it feels like a secret between you and Mom, so you don’t.

\--

In box twelve, there is no video. You balk at its contents, turn it inside out more than once because there must be a mistake, she can’t have said all that she had to say. But there is nothing but a big book about ectobiology, and a huge, plush purple striped scarf. You wrap it around your neck and inhale. It smells like the inside of her wardrobe, where you used to sit for hours as a child and cocoon yourself with her old clothes; a little musty, but beneath that, something sweet and strong you can’t name. 

Dirk tells you about his dreams of a purple moon, and says that he sees you there all the time, sleeping, but you don’t ever dream of it. You don’t really dream of much; most nights you don’t dream at all. Sometimes you dream, though, about Dirk, about your mother, and your new friends Jane and Jake, who are from the past like your mom and Dirk’s bro are. Sometimes you dream you’re being kissed, and sometimes it makes you feel too hot under your skin. 

But on the night of your twelveth birthday, when you’re in bed wrapped in the purple scarf, you dream that you’re a grown up woman. You’ve got heels and a lab coat, and you put your martini down on the table to wrap your arms around a little girl, with fair hair and purple eyes, who calls you mommy, who you call Rose.

\--

You have your first existential crisis on your thirteenth birthday.

You found the wine cellar in the basement a few months ago, and you are slowly working your way through, researching different labels on the internet and developing favorites more quickly than you’re developing hips. 

The box is right in front of you and you’re not sure you want to open it. Part of you never got over last year’s letdown, of not having another video to memorize, of not getting to see her smile and hear her “I love you” anew. Another part of you thinks that maybe you’re outgrowing your mom, the way you outgrew the old books and toys she gave you. You have friends now that you can actually converse with, you can shoot things that are very far away and almost never miss, and you’ve got a house full of cloned kittens to keep you company. It doesn’t replace the tender touch of another person, but then, neither do the videos, or the gifts. Maybe you had yourself convinced that they did, but you’re too old for delusions. 

Unless you’re drunk off your flat ass.

“Listen, Rolal, I can’t tell you what shit to do or not do, but it isn’t Rose’s fault that she’s not around. And when she was packing that box, she was thinking of you and no one else, and you can’t just let that love fester and waste, can you?”

Dirk’s got his glasses off and his eyes are tired; you know his birthday is tomorrow and you know he wants to sink his hands into his box from Dave so bad it aches him. You pour yourself another glass of wine, even though he protests, and then shut off the webcam.

This time there is a video, and another album. The photos in this one aren’t the bleak images from the one you got three years ago; your Mom is smiling in most of these, if not all of them. You flip through the book. In your favorite one, she’s got her middle finger up to the camera, and a sassy smile on her face. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, and then she more than makes up for it; this video is twice as long as the year ten one, and it’s full of personal anecdotes about her. She tells you about chasing fireflies as a child, and about how she met Dave in high school. There’s commentary about the photos in the book; one from her prom, where she’s dressed to the nines in a black gothic number, with the makeup to match, that she said made her date leave to get her punch and never return. You love the way she looks in it, and wonder if you shouldn’t give the dark makeup look a try, too. 

It’s four hours later when the video closes, “I love you, Roxy.” But, you avoid Pesterchum for the rest of the night because you don’t want Dirk’s ‘I-told-you-so’s to ruin your good mood.

\--

On your fourteenth birthday, you realize there are only two boxes left. You leave the final one undisturbed, and take fourteen back to your room with a tall glass of Jack.

“I am so proud of you, Roxy,” your mother looks older than she does in most of the videos, you notice, except maybe the one when you were ten (not that you can remember it very well). As a child, it had never occurred to you that they were being filmed out of order, but now that’s it more obvious, it makes you wonder more about her. How much of your mother do you know, exactly; how much has she let you see? You have her books, and her smiles, and she even let you see her cry. She seems a little far away sometimes the same way Dirk is, and you know how hard it is for him to cry in front of you. 

“I spent all my life wondering what you would be like. It took me some time to grow used to the idea of maternity, but then all at once I became more than comfortable with it. I wanted to meet you, get to know you. I even anticipated the fights we would have when you were this age, ready to spread your wings. Finding out that I wasn’t going to get to have you, and that no matter the attempts my role as a mother was an exercise in futility… facing that was harder for me than facing my own death.”

Your mother pauses and licks her lips; you have mastered makeup in recent years, but still marvel at how natural the purple color looks on her face. Her eyes look tired, and her whole body lowers itself into its seat.

“I have been called out for a meeting with the Batterwitch. I believe the outcome is plain enough. And yet, the only thing I have to regret is that I failed you.

“I love you, Roxy.”

\--

Box fifteen has nothing but a note: _I love you. Good luck._

You put down the booze and play a game.

\--

Her name is Rose Lalonde, and she looks like she’s your age, wearing the flashiest neon orange pajamas that should never have been allowed to exist, and her lips are purple. 

You don’t move but only because you can’t, and she doesn’t move, either, but she’s looking at you. Her eyes are on yours and her face looks sort of like Dirk’s, now that you can see it this up close and this young, but it also looks sort of like yours. Her purple painted lip quirks up, and that’s all it takes to shake your body from its stupor and send you flying for her. 

You hold her and you think for a moment she doesn’t know what to do with you because her arms are up in the air, but then she holds you back and it’s _perfect_.

And even though you know Rose isn’t exactly your mom, you say, “I love you, too.”

_end_


End file.
